Three Activities One Writer Used to Reignite Her Creative Spark

In January, I decided this would be my year of professional enrichment. My freelance life was going well, but at times, it felt too cyclical. You could say I’d finally slipped out of a multi-year freelance honeymoon phase to stare down the reality of the daily grind.

I had to remind myself: if I’d wanted a daily grind, I wouldn’t have become a freelancer in the first place. And worse, all of those wonderful long-term goals I’d set were completely unaddressed. What about that book I wanted to write? And the community involvement I craved? And then there was my outdated Facebook page, garnering zero traffic and collecting digital dust.

As you may know, every day as a freelance writer feels like a sprint. If I even let up for one second, I imagine, everything will collapse around me. I won’t get paid. I’ll be late on rent. I’ll have to sit down and have “the talk” with my daughter’s daycare provider and we’ll eat nothing but potatoes for a week straight. These are the fears that trivialize the outdated website and unwritten book.

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But early this year, despite the daily grind, I managed to start carving out time to address these enrichment opportunities and design my “ongoing education” as a writer. There are three activities, in my opinion, that you can implement immediately to open doors and fill voids: community engagement, passion projects and keeping your social media presence updated.

Real-life community engagement

Despite the cost-effectiveness and speed of digital communication, I am a believer in the unique value of face-to-face interaction, especially for freelancers and other small business owners. Not only does community involvement fill up your internal social meter, it also brands you as a writer among other professionals.

About two months ago, I joined a coworking group, The Creative Foundry, located in a historic building in my small city. The benefit over the first few days was purely aesthetic: peering out of the floor-to-ceiling windows that face the main drag was certainly more interesting than my home office view of my neighboring apartment.

After a couple of weeks, though, I started making connections. The barista at the coffee shop started recognizing me. I met other coworkers. One quiet morning, when only the owner of the facility and I were there, he made a joke that sparked nearly a half hour of conversation about politics and religion. He introduced me to a young woman who was starting a networking group for small-business creatives. One cocktail hour and two coffee meetings later, I’ve befriended a stable of interesting people — interior designers, a branding expert, a small-business lawyer and other writers — all who inspire me and serve as resources down the line for the growth of my business.

If you’re interested in coworking, try searching “coworking” or “shared work space,” followed by your city. In addition, there’s a global coworking movement called Jelly, which is a less formal meet-up of local freelancers at spaces of their choosing.

Of course, there are other ways to connect. If you need feedback, start a writers’ group or join an existing one. If you need job leads, find (or create) a networking group for creatives. Other outlets, like church, volunteer work, political involvement or nightlife may address any of those needs as well. Just make sure it’s something you’re genuinely interested in, or it will be tough to find the energy to commit.

Finally, when it comes to getting out there in the real world, the key is persistence. Great relationships don’t happen overnight. First you have to show up and then you have to keep showing up, often dozens of times, before you see the return on your investment.

Passion projects

A passion project is something creative you do primarily out of love and, often, it’s something you’re not getting paid for. If you’re like me and have a hard time justifying doing any kind of work for free, opt for a project that you may eventually be able to sell. However, your primary goal should be creative expression rather than income because the commercialization of it can often take away some of the joy.

Here’s an example: A couple of years ago, my sister, who lives 500 miles away from me, lamented over email how her rigorous work schedule and long commute left little room for creativity at the end of the day. We decided to do writing prompts over email for a few days to escape reality and have fun with words.

We ended up with stories and prose poems about a guy who hates his artificial hand, a suicidal man on the run and a conundrum involving acid-spiked orange juice. These weren’t topics that would have grown organically in either of our minds, and they weren’t even distantly related to the work we did on a daily basis (I was writing for parenting blogs and tending to my newborn; she was working as an administrative assistant for a private equity firm).

I mention this example because the content we produced was completely unsalable: there was no way either of us could rationally benefit from this writing in our professional lives. But just opening the floodgates of creative possibilities enriched our daily work. One prompt only took about 15 minutes of my time, but the energy derived from it fueled my blogging and made everything seem more colorful.

If you don’t have a creativity-starved sister who lives 500 miles away to hold you accountable, here are some other ideas for passion projects:

__? A dream journal or photo journal

__? A complementary artistic hobby, like sculpture or knitting

__? Blogging about your favorite hobby

__? Outlining an idea for a book

__? Writing a musical composition

__? Daily haikus

__? Letters to old, new or imaginary friends

Another way to generate ideas for passion projects is to think about the creative activities you pursued as a child, before you were swayed by the promise of a crisp paycheck. My favorites were short-story writing and film editing. Because I don’t have the gadgetry and the time to pursue the film thing, I’m currently jumping back into fiction, and I’ve created a small writers__? critique group to help hold me accountable. Stretching my creative muscles not only hones my writing skills, but it reminds me of the spark that started this whole thing in the first place. Unlike my day-to-day writing, fiction deeply rejuvenates me and restores my intrigue with the world.

Social media

For me, social media has been an invaluable tool for landing freelance gigs, connecting with my audience and seeking out experts for interviews. My social media skills have evolved by intuition: over time, I’ve learned that more likes mean more exposure and writing status updates with a positive spin induces more likes. I’ve learned not to get abrasive with others, for both professional and personal reasons. Basically, all rules that apply in person should apply online. Conduct yourself with integrity, be witty and interesting, and don’t solicit or spam the people who love and admire you.

If you’re also a little baffled on how to maximize your social media experience, pick one outlet to focus on, rather than trying to be omnipresent. So between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and the various blogging platforms — which do you choose? It depends on your existing social media presence, and how you prefer to use each site. Facebook is my hybrid personal and professional social network. My Facebook friends are a mix of people I’ve met over the last 10 years, and I often use it to spread the word about my own writing, but also to share random links from around the Web (and pictures of my family).

Although I mix business with personal life, it is often advantageous to set up a Facebook page separate from your personal profile. The most obvious difference is the structure and analytics of a business page: there are worlds of data at your fingertips regarding your geographic visibility, who’s reading what, the popularity of other business pages and more. Unlike a personal profile, you can promote your Facebook page with a preset budget. You also have room on a professional page to include a broader array of details about your business. To build an audience for a new page, you can use Facebook to invite your existing connections and email contacts to like your page.

Unlike my hybrid personal and professional profile on Facebook, my Twitter is strictly professional and it’s the main social site I’m focusing my energy on at the moment. I like Twitter because it’s easy to tailor my newsfeed to my particular interests and career goals by following other freelancers and organizations. Those that I follow offer up links that help me generate story ideas, address problems I face as a freelancer, and keep me up to date on the industry in short snippets.

My intention this year is to tweet at least once a day to keep my byline out there — a small, manageable goal. I’m also in the constant process of finding helpful and interesting users or organizations to follow. For example, @WhoPaysWriters and various news sites like @Reuters and @WomensMediaCntr keep me updated on industry news and issues important to me. I also follow publications I hope to write for in the future, like @Salon.

Google+ is especially relevant for writers with its Authorship function, which links the content you write to your Google+ profile (sign up at plus.google.com/authorship). On LinkedIn, consider joining a group designed for writers like LinkEds & Writers.

If you really don’t know where to start, try taking a class on the subject of your desired social media site here on Mediabistro.

Amanda Layman Low is a freelance writer and artist. Contact her on Twitter @AmandaLaymanLow.